#next is a barbie and I could get a short one that’s articulated and just paint her grey but I hear painting skin is tricky

[swordmaid]

one of the projects I want to do like at least ONCE just because I watch an exorbitant amount of it is doll repaint and I think I want to try make a shri’iia doll…. I feel like that would be fun I fear albeit a bit ambitious for a first try since I def want to put her in armour but I’m nothing if not a bit delusional in my own skills and I’m also gonna do everything for my current favs

[joshybearhuggies]

I am probably quite late to this news, especially to an avid Bratz collector…. But the latest Sasha absolutely fuckin SLAHPS!

Sooooo…. When Bratz came back to shelves I 1000% got my life collecting the girlies from my childhood that I couldn’t have. In this fun process I reacquainted myself with these fashionable icons, I also remembered my odd connection to their bodies.

I love their hight being a little shorter than our standard Barbie. I adore the big heads and sultry screenings. AND THE FASHIONS!…… but………. Them “feet shoes” ugh …. It bugged me then and it kinda still erks me today. This bugged me so much that for a moment there I wouldn’t pick a Bratz doll up. When I did I would always find another body for the head. Which also wasn’t really a fix because I wanted them to still remain short. Frustrating for sure. Until I happened upon the LOL OMG hybrids on IG. I made one myself and before I knew it I had a lil army of these hybrids. The color match was spot on and I adored the articulation in the arms/wrist. The dainty lil manicured hands also made my already beloved girlies SING!

With Falicia I’ve already made two in this form lol 😂 I mean I absolutely LIVE for this form factor. It solves all my problems, I get a doll in the same scale, the option for standard shoes, a doll that keeps her feets 🥰 and I could still use many of the fashions for the Bratz dolls.

So because of this level of play I admit I hadn’t given the latest Bratz dolls a fair look. I saw them in passing for sure but until literally tonight… I didn’t think to purchase. Seeing Sasha with floor length hair and upon closer inspection ✨articulated arms/wrists✨😳😳 I had to! She was even on sale to boot.

Immediately I thought…. Maybe I could give the stock Bratz body a go with this articulation. I definitely missed out on the previous Bratz with the articulated arms/wrist aaannd I also missed out on the Bratz dolls that had the full body articulation treatment some time ago. So here we are, I find myself opening this adorable Sasha and hoping I like this doll on her stock body.

I’m so so so happy to say that I am in bed writing this silly little blog entry because I ADORE this body. Now I can finally make useful all the Bratz shoes I’ve hoarded over the years! Telling myself “ONE DAY”! And today is that day! Ugh! I’m floored! I WILL BRING HOME MORE! Mark my words🥰👌🏿

Also we will not unpack the logic of my not liking the “feet shoes” but still keeping said “feet shoes” because they’re too ✨CUTE✨ to toss or sale… we just won’t, there’s no time 😂

I think the new girls still feel like Bratz dolls as well. They’re everything I already love with a more contemporary spice. I think my next girly might be Jade…. Or Yasmin hmmmm

To think…. I only went in Walmart for milk lol 😂 gosh I’m a mess

[resinboy]

I’m going to rant about Creatable World dolls because I have so many thoughts now that it’s been a couple years since the line ended.

I adore Creatable World so much. I’m so sad the line tanked when it did, but at the same time, I get it. Firstly, doll lines come and go like crazy. Hot topic one year, losing to whatever Barbie’s doing & the next trendy toy the year after. It’s fine. It’s rare for anything to take off like Monster High and Bratz did, and I wasn’t expecting Creatable World to catch that lightning in a bottle.

Secondly, everything about Creatable World that set it apart and made it cool and unique was a double edged sword.

The base conceit about creating your own characters is amazing, and I’m sure imaginative kids would just run away with that. But at the same time, I feel like a lot of kids need more of a jumping off point for who the dolls are and how they’ll interact with each other. You can only go so far with a mini-me doll.

On top of that, marketing. I feel like a neutral, well-articulated regular person doll like CW is going to get a LOT more playtime mileage out of a kid’s toybox than a super beautiful gimmicky Barbie doll that talks and is covered in glitter, but a little kid is probably going to be way more inclined to grab a super sparkly pink mermaid with battery powered movement or something like that off the store shelves. The creativity aspect and being like a regular kid are more conceptually interesting than visually, and that’s just not going to grab a little kid’s attention. I don’t think a kid’s going to understand how much more love they’re going to get out of a doll like Creatable World than a more eye-catching novelty doll.

Then, there’s the nonbinary/genderfluid/lgbt+ angle they were using to market them. It’s a great attention grabber that’s going to get news sites talking, and wealthy neoliberal parents shelling out for these so they can show off how open-minded they are on Instagram. However, it’s also going to get homophobic weirdos to boycott them, and I think alienate the average parent that isn’t super invested in “politics” and LGBT+ civil rights issues. Part of what makes Barbie so eternal, I think, is that she was shocking at first, but now, even when the brand is getting tired and stale, Barbie is just THE fashion doll that almost every little girl had across classes and political affiliations of parents. There was a Barbie to pander to every kind of parents’ values, and market to every little girl’s lifestyle. Parents knew Barbie from their own childhood, so she has security. CW banked too hard on one demographic of buyer, and once they had all the ones that were easy to get, they were done.

A ton of people have already said this, but the ability to swap between long and short hairstyles to shake up the gender presentation was a great idea, but the wigs just ended up looking awkward and wonky and not staying on right.

The fashions of these dolls are really incredible for a kids’ toy. Beautiful, detailed, well put together, practical fashions that are trendy and cool, stuff that a real kid could wear and play in. I love it. But then we come back to the problem of not being able to catch a kid’s attention in comparison to more outlandish cartoon fantasy aesthetics like the LOL OMG dolls and Rainbow High (which are gorgeous imo). Creatable World dolls are relatable, which is probably going to be super fun to play with, while Barbie and other teen/adult aged fashion dolls are aspirational, which is going to draw a kid in and be more interesting on the store shelves.

But this brings me into the next thing - quality. These dolls are sturdy, beautiful, well articulated, with super detailed well-designed clothes and despite the bad design choices of the wigs, the hair itself was really pretty and soft. Kids don’t care about that quality stuff until way down the line when their cheap toys fall apart and their really good toys give them years more of play. And the more complex the toy, the more you’re going to lose with quality control, the more you’re going to have to hike up the price to turn a profit. So Mattel ended up trying to sell these 30 dollar gender diversity dolls with a very subtle, understated aesthetic to a rapidly vanishing middle class right when Covid was committing economic murder. So like, a minuscule fraction of parents actually got this doll for their kids, and an even more minuscule fraction of adult doll collectors and customizers bought these to give their little Skipper dolls better articulation and clothes. But kids weren’t begging for these (I was but that’s besides the point).

It’s crazy because Creatable World is the only playline doll I’ve ever loved enough to collect as an adult, and as a lefty genderfuck myself, I wanted these to succeed so bad. I’m sure this is cliché to say, but I wish I’d had dolls like this as a little kid. They bring me so much joy, and I found myself inventing all kinds of characters and storylines for mine just dressing them up and posing them to display in my little glass doll case. I can’t even begin to picture how many hours of fun I would have had with these dolls as a kid. I probably would have brought them absolutely everywhere with me.

Mattel probably won’t see this and probably doesn’t plan on releasing these dolls ever again, but IF THEY DID, I’d say a few things that could make this line sell better would be:

1. Fixing how the hair works.

2. More sparkles or something to better catch kids’ attention on shelves.

3. More purchase options than just the $30 kit with the doll and a ton of clothes in a big set. Selling the dolls and clothes separately, more attention-grabbing THEMED outfit packs. I feel like wave 2 was going in that direction and if it weren’t for Covid it’s might have worked. A sleepover set with pajamas, a sleeping bag and a teddy bear! A picnic set with a little basket and a blanket and a cute gingham dress or button-up shirt and shorts! A party outfit with lots of glitter! You have to make up for the lack of guidance with the character with adorable themed outfits.

4. More accessories and playsets. Again, I feel like they were GOING to do that before the line failed, but I think little toys and foods and like a closet or bed, and if you want to go REALLY crazy, a dollhouse or mini playground. The dolls and their clothes were amazing, but just not enough to really get the average kid’s imagination running.

What I feel like Creatable World was and didn’t take full advantage of was being a middle ground between Barbie and American Girl Dolls, but for all kids instead of just girls. More real and relatable and action-friendly than Barbie, more affordable and accessible than American Girl (and less babydoll-looking). There’s so much about both of those brands that kids go nuts for that Creatable World could have done that would have been amazing, and I don’t have my hopes up for it, but I’d be thrilled to see Mattel try it again someday at a better moment for it.

[petrichorate]

Little Fires Everywhere: Thoughts

Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng)

I feel like Little Fires Everywhere is like a trap of sorts—it draws you in quickly, under the pretense of some light entertainment, and then hits you hard with moments of intense poignancy and frustration. I wanted to read more books by Asian American authors this year because I wanted to come to terms with my identity as a Chinese American. I needed to understand how I had been approaching that part of myself, and also to hear the stories of other people who had gone through the same thing—especially if those experiences were sometimes shameful, terrifying, or filled with guilt, as mine have often been. It wasn’t until college that I started being proud of my heritage; there are still moments when I unfortunately feel ashamed of that part of myself, or somehow feel lesser than those around me. But I’ve also started to appreciate the unique beauty of being Asian American—the amazing resilience and reflection I’ve received by being part of a culture that is complex, and contradictory, and somehow immensely messed up and exquisite at the same time. 

Little Fires Everywhere managed to pack so much about Asian American-ness, motherhood, and self identity into a seamless narrative. I remember messaging a friend at the beginning of the novel that “it was entertaining, but seems like just a light read. I kind of expected it to push more on Asian American issues.” But the more I read, the more I realized that there were lessons interwoven throughout the story that could only have been learned through intense, real experiences. I love how Ng describes the “sureness” possessed in children from wealthy and established families—a feeling I always got from my childhood friends who lived in houses with kitchen islands in nice neighborhoods, but that I never felt I held inside myself. I love how Ed Lim, the lawyer, reflects on the difficulty of finding books and dolls that his daughter can relate to—it’s something I noticed in all my picture books about kids with curly golden hair, and it’s something I am actively working on because I don’t want my future daughter or son growing up without characters who look like them. 

Here are some parts I thought were particularly memorable:

On stealing from people who don’t notice: “She had cried all the way to Lafayette, where they would stay for the next eight months, and even the prancing china palomino she had stolen from the girl’s collection gave her no comfort, for though she waited nervously, there was never any complaint about the loss, and what could be less satisfying than stealing from someone so endowed that they never even noticed what you’d taken?”

On the “sureness” or efficacy felt in people from established families: “Even the younger Richardsons had it, this sureness in themselves. Sunday mornings Pearl and Moody would be sitting in the kitchen when Trip drifted in from a run, lounging against the island to pour a glass of juice, tall and tan and lean in gym shorts, utterly at ease, his sudden grin throwing her into disarray. Lexie perched at the counter, inelegant in sweatpants and a tee, hair clipped in an untidy bun, picking sesame seeds off a bagel. They did not care if Pearl saw them this way. They were so artlessly beautiful, even right out of bed. Where did this ease come from? How could they be so at home, so sure of themselves, even in pajamas? When Lexie ordered from a menu, she never said, ‘Could I have...?’ She said, ‘I’ll have...’ confidently, as if she had only to say it to make it so. It unsettled Pearl and it fascinated her.”

On covering up naïveté with “bookish wisdom”: “She could see the similarities between these two lonely children, even more clearly than they could: the same sensitive personalities lurking inside both of them, the same bookish wisdom layered over a deep naïveté.”

On the ability of wealth to draw you away from the problems you want to solve: “Of course she understood why this was happening: they were fighting to right injustices. But part of her shuddered at the scenes on the television screen. Grainy scenes, but no less terrifying: grocery stores ablaze, smoke billowing from their rooftops, walls gnawed to studs by flame. The jagged edges of smashed windows like fangs in the night. Soldiers marching with rifles past drugstores and Laundromats. Jeeps blocking intersections under dead traffic lights. Did you have to burn down the old to make way for the new? The carpet at her feet was soft. The sofa beneath her was patterned with roses. Outside, a mourning dove cooed from the bird feeder and a Cadillac glided to a dignified stop at the corner. She wondered which was the real world. The following spring, when antiwar protests broke out, she did not get in her car and drive to join them. She wrote impassioned letters to the editor; she signed petitions to end the draft. She stitched a peace sign onto her knapsack. She wove flowers into her hair.”

On parents and touch: “Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. As a baby Pearl had clung to her; she’d worn Pearl in a sling because whenever she’d set her down, Pearl would cry. There’d scarcely been a moment in the day when they had not been pressed together. As she got older, Pearl would still cling to her mother’s leg, then her waist, then her hand, as if there were something in her mother she needed to absorb through the skin. Even when she had her own bed, she would often crawl into Mia’s in the middle of the night and burrow under the old patchwork quilt, and in the morning they would wake up tangled, Mia’s arm pinned beneath Pearl’s head, or Pearl’s legs thrown across Mia’s belly. Now, as a teenager, Pearl’s caresses had become rare—a peck on the cheek, a one-armed, half-hearted hug—and all the more precious because of that. It was the way of things, Mia thought to herself, but how hard it was. The occasional embrace, a head leaned for just a moment on your shoulder, when what you really wanted more than anything was to press them to you and hold them so tight you fused together and could never be taken apart. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.”

On regrets: “‘Most of the time, everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you.’”

On the lack of good Asian representation in toys for kids: “But there was no doll with black hair, let alone a face that looked anything like Monique’s. Ed Lim had gone to four different toy stores searching for a Chinese doll; he would have bought it for his daughter, whatever the price, but no such thing existed.  He’d gone so far as to write to Mattel, asking them if there was a Chinese Barbie doll, and they’d replied that yes, they offered ‘Oriental Barbie’ and sent him a pamphlet. He had looked at that pamphlet for a long time, at the Barbie’s strange mishmash of a costume, all red and gold satin and like nothing he’d ever seen on a Chinese or Japanese or Korean woman, at her waist-length black hair and slanted eyes. I am from Hong Kong, the pamphlet ran. It is in the Orient, or Far East. Throughout the Orient, people shop at outdoor marketplaces where goods such as fish, vegetables, silk, and spices are openly displayed. The year before, he and his wife and Monique had gone on a trip to Hong Kong, which struck him, mostly, as a pincushion of gleaming skyscrapers. In a giant, glassed-in shopping mall, he’d bought a dove-gray cashmere sweater that he wore under his suit jacket on chilly days. Come visit the Orient. I know you will find it exotic and interesting. In the end, he’d thrown the pamphlet away. He’d heard, from friends with younger children, that the expensive doll line now had one Asian doll for sale—and a few black ones, too—but he’d never seen it. Monique was seventeen now, and had long outgrown dolls.”

On the frustration of people finally recognizing problems that you have always known about through real experience and not research studies: “‘What about other books, Mrs. McCullough? Any other books with Chinese characters?’ Mrs. McCullough bit her lip. ‘I haven’t really looked for them,’ she admitted. ‘I hadn’t thought about it.’ ‘I can save you some time,’ said Ed Lim. ‘There really aren’t very many. So May Ling has no dollars that look like her, and no books with pictures of people that look like her.’ Ed Lim paced a few more steps. Nearly two decades later, others would raise this question, would talk about books as mirrors and windows, and Ed Lim, tired by then, would find himself as frustrated as he was grateful. We’ve always known, he would think; what took you so long?”

On what Asians are “allowed” to be in society: “Men like him, the article would suggest, weren’t supposed to lose their cool—though it was never specified whether ‘like him’ meant lawyers or something else entirely. But the truth was—as Mr. Richardson recognized—that an angry Asian man didn’t fit the public’s expectations, and was therefore unnerving. Asian men could be socially inept and incompetent and ridiculous, like a Long Duk Dong, or at best unthreatening and slightly buffoonish, like a Jackie Chan. They were not allowed to be angry and articulate and powerful. And possibly right, Mr. Richardson thought uneasily.”

[sassypantsjaxon]

Ask and ye shall receive!

Okay, so I used a Creatable World doll for Kiku. (Creatable World dolls were a short lived line from Mattel, AKA the creators of Barbie) They’re a little bit shorter and more realistically proportioned than a Barbie, and unlike most Barbies, they are fully articulated, so they can be posed. Here’s my other Creatable World doll next to a Barbie for comparison. (in case you’re wondering, I have the straight black hair and wavy blonde hair dolls)

If you decide you want one for yourself, Creatable World dolls aren’t made anymore, so it might be a little harder to find one, but I found some from walmart, amazon, or target, but you could also check resale sites like ebay or mercari. Also, keep in mind that I live in the US, so if you live somewhere else that would probably effect availability.

For Kiku’s clothes I just googled ‘barbie kimono’ and ‘barbie haori’ patterns. I used this one for the kimono and this one for the haori. I used a pink satin-y material for the kimono, and a dark red silk for the haori.

The Kimono pattern is for a barbie-sized fashion doll, so I had to make more narrow, and shorter so it would fit Kiku. Also it didn’t have much of a guideline on how to make an obi, so I just used a long, wide piece of fabric folded and sewn in half and tied it in the back. Also I embroidered a couple of hearts on one of the sleeves, and if you want to add anything like that, I recommend doing it before sewing everything together.

The haori pattern...to be honest I would recommend finding a different one because it doesn’t have instructions, and I had to fiddle around with it to get it to print in the right size. It worked, but there’s probably an easier pattern out there.

Also he has this other piece (that I’m not sure what to call) that he wears under his kimono. I used the same pattern as the kimono, but made it wider in the front, a little bit shorter, and didn’t add any sleeves. This one’s just made from some plain white cotton.

And then there’s his shoes, which are kind of fun and kind of a pain. I started by using some stretchy white material to sew a couple of socks, then cut some black foam about the same size as his feet, and sewed the foam to the socks. Then I glued a second piece of foam to the bottom of the first to hold everything together and make it a little thicker.

Hope this gives some ideas to anyone who might want to try something like this themselves! (keep in mind that these are kind of complicated patterns, so if you don’t have much experience sewing and get stuck anywhere, feel free to send me a message and I’ll try to help :)

I don't have any process pics from while I was making him🥲 can I offer you some close-ups of him and his clothes instead???

(If you want to know what kind of doll/patterns/materials I used, let me know, and I'll post about that too 😘)

[taffytrotski]

It's Cold Enough Out There

This photo was taken on the coldest day and night of that February, two years ago. I had gone to Burlington, KY to spend a few days with Sami Bisharah and on the second day I bundled up to venture out into the single digit temperatures to take some photos of his wooded hillside property covered with the sugary chrystaline snow from a storm two nights previous. After an hour out there, despite the fact that I was sweating as much as I would on one of those late July Ohio Valley afternoons at 95° and 95% humidity, all motor control in my hands had come to a state in which my fingers were operating with all the dexterity but even less articulation than a Barbie doll’s legs, and feeling as if they were at a searing temperature sufficiently hellish to transform those perfectly and impossibly shapely doll legs into the puddle of molten plastic they would be as it reaches flash point, begins flaming and regains the blackness of the sludgy, cloying state that it held as petroleum buried deep in the earth for many, many millions of years. Let me explain. On the afternoon of Christmas 1977 I got on my bike, heading to the home of the Hanson family(Jenifer Hanson). That day it was unseasonably warm, in the high 50°s and I was anxious to get away from my home where the holiday was that year (most years) driven by the dysfunction of an alcoholic, abusive father and a mother who, though physically impaired by a serious and painful injury, was perpetually holding onto all she could; house; kids; cars; even husband, as every case of beer and bottle of licour he consumed threatened to wash it all away into an abyss that she had been raised in but managed to escape and was determined never to return to. Add to that less than idyllic household my homosexuality as a third, or possibly sixth elephant in the room and you should understand why after the chain broke on my bike a scant quarter mile out, even after I struggled unsuccessfully to fix it in the rapidly falling temperatures, I chose to tarry on as an Alberta Clipper of phenomenal and now legendary force delivered it’s unexpected and massive cargo of sub-zero white Canadian inconvenience. By the time I had reached the outlying, houseless streets of the undeveloped part of the Glenn Lakes subdivision I had been walking against the storm or attempting to repair my bike for over two hours. As I walked past a short cul-de-sac I stopped, marvelling a beautiful swirl of drifted snow about four feet high that had formed there, and thought I should lie down and rest. I had been enveloped by an ironic warmth and a heavy eyed sleepiness that implored me to curl up in that soft blanket of snow bank, but as I tried to put my bike down, I couldn’t release the handlebars and noticed that my fingers had become as white as the snow. That is when I realized something was seriously wrong: I shouldn’t feel that warmth; white immovable fingers is only a good thing when one’s hands were feminine and the stars of an Ivory dishwashing liquid commercial; I have icicles clinging to my fourteen year old’s wispy mustache and my eyebrows and oh, wow, my hair! I have no idea how long I stood there, more than three times talking myself in then out of the deadly respite I wanted to take, but I do know that I left my home at 3pm and arrived at the Hanson’s at 6pm. After peeling my pearly fingers from the icy glaze that had formed over them as they grasped in determination to keep that bike in the afterlife, I rang the doorbell , and a depricating dread washed over me as I stood waiting, thinking how I was going to ruin Christmas for this family that I had come to treasure for its welcoming and loving normalcy that for someone like me was elusive as Bigfoot in the untethered social upheavals of late 1970s America. In a display that heralded the lack of dysfunction and endearing charm of the Hanson family, all six children, ages six to seventeen, and Mom and Dad answered the the door, ready with a good natured, teasing joke about the cold and snow, but their smiling faces were replaced by ones of shocked concern as the gravity of the falling mercury pulled all the levity out of that moment’s orbit and was sufficient, ans cause time to slow and allow me a front row seat to the consequential fallout of the poor judgement of a teenager. Finally Matt, who was seven or eight broke the spell by saying with a humorously candid aplomb “Oooh! His hands are all white!” and this family of eight individuals went into action, leaving behind the dismayal that rang their doorbell on that Christmas evening, so they could attend to the boy whom it had escorted and from whom it needed an immediate intervention. They did so with a precision that dysfunction would have stalled, or worse derailed when presented with such urgency. This is when things become clouded in my memory. I know that Jen called the hospital and relayed the instructions to put my hands under cold running water while Christine assisted me at the kitchen sink, but as the icy cold water ran over my hands, awakening nerve cells that had shut down along with capillaries as the skin cells in my hands had begun to rupture under the expansive preasure of the water inside as it had turned to ice, making it feel as if she had thrust them into fire, and then I passed out from the pain. With little regard for the Winter Storm of the Century that was raging, Jack and Shirley Hanson got me to Bethesda North Hospital while either Christine or Jen held me in the back seat of their car, waiting with me until my parents were able to get there. For several weeks my hands were useless due to pain and the dead skin turning a dark blue, thickening and stiffening before pealing off. To this day I lose feeling and blood flow below 50°, my hands turning that same ghostly white, then as temperatures approach freezing the burning sensation returns, although only to a ghostly degree of what it had been that Christmas night in 1977 when I got frostbite. That afternoon, two years ago at Sami’s house, I came in from the cold, spending the time it took for the burning to abate and the color of life to return to my hands, relating that story as he prepared a dinner of stuffed Arabic aubergines and the two of us drank one of those red Zinfandels with a flavor so big it was practically chewable. With the wine in full effect and dinner settling into our bellies for a along Winter’s nap, we reminisced about the first of many Christmas parties he had hosted after being back in Greater Cincinnati from his native Kuwait. My ex and I along with another friend had spent the night at Sami’s while a snow storm and an ill prepared Kentucky Department of Transportation stranded us and hundreds of travelers just four miles north of us at the Ohio border, far to the south at the Tennessee border hundreds more, and an estimated 10,000 on the Commonwealth’s Interstate Highways. As the evening proceeded and we became as stuffed as those aubergines and were satededly regaled by reminiscences of the early days of our neer twenty year friendship we listened obediently to the truth in the wine as it reminded us that this night the temperature would be dipping to -16°F, making it one of the coldest nights since the Winter of 1977-78, and therefore one best spent protected by a thick layer of blankets and the distractions of dreams. We said our goodnights then he went to his room and I to mine at opposite ends of the house. Within an hour a pain that had thrice before vexed me over the same number of years had me writhing and moaning as it’s severity grew progressively intense. Just two weeks before, in similar circumstances, had I suffered for twelve hours as I waited unnecessarily for a call from my doctor’s office that the naïveté of a fifty-one year old with health insurance for the first time in his adult life (thanks to the ADA) erroneously had me thinking was prudent and requisite. By the time I received that call the pain had passed making it unlikely that the suspected cause of gallstones would be detected but I was told to not hesitate going to hospital emergency should it return. In 1996 I was diagnosed with a disease that is manageable with expensive medications, though without those medications most die within five years of diagnosis, and because that diagnosis resulted in an ineligbility for insurance coverage, I had spent the preceding thirteen years knowing that this disease was ever increasingly likely to bring about by death. Every illness, major and minor, skin blemishes, periods of lethargic exhaustion, for more than a decade seemed a plausible harbinger of my impending demise. I began having fevers monthly, then weekly and finally after three years of this, every few days. Though none were that grim herald, the physiological and psychological impacts of living with such uncertainty, for such a long time, had compounded the then undiagnosed CPTSD I have been treated for over the past two and a half years. What happened next is the linchpin around which these recollections hinge, and that door to which those hinges are affixed opens to a greater sense of humanity. I woke Sami up on what was indeed the coldest night since that long ago Winter and he drove me to University Hospital in his Chevy Suburban with an interior so roomy that after the 45 minute drive the temperature hadn’t climbed much above 0°, though when the nurse at the hospital took mine it was 94°. Once there I had the wretched remains of my badly diseased gallbladder and the single, fist sized gallstone that had been precipitating the plethora of symtoms that, because of the inaccessibility of medical treatment, were attributed to the manageable but deadly disease of which I had been aware. The surgery with complications that directly resulted from the dysfunction of living for such a long time with a badly diseased organ, and a two day hospital stay did not incur a bill that would have been impossible for me to pay, and soon after, for the first time in my adult life my physical and mental health began to improve. When confronted with crisis, the dysfunctional will more often than not become distractedly mired by considerations and worries, some germane most not so much, until the crisis is no longer the focus of action, allowing the impact of that crisis to compound. When confronted with the same crisis those not impaired by dysfunction readily and with the barest modicum hesitation, necessitated by mindful assessment, then immediately following will seek resolution to that crisis, eliminating or working around any impediments. Although far from perfect the ADA sought to eliminate many of the barriers to resolution of the crisis in health care that the dysfunction of American society had allowed to snowball as market forces were given deference over humanity. I will fully admit that health care is not a right under our great Constitution but it is a dysfunction of our society that with the third highest per capita economy in the world; the strongest most sustained economy of the modern era, that such a crisis has perpetuated for more than a century, despite the mission of the government, clearly stated in the Constitution to “promote the general welfare”. Sad.

[theliterateape]

Reflections on My Year as a Windy City Empire Duchess

By Elizabeth Harper

The shenanigans my friend Kate gets me into.

I’d been to a few of the Windy City Empire events to support my friend and because I really love drag shows and a lot of them happen at a neighborhood bar, Charlie’s Chicago, which is walking distance from where I live in Boystown in Chicago, the oldest officially recognized gay neighborhood in the United States. A country and western themed gay bar that also hosts drag shows, karaoke, burlesque, as well as country line and two-step dancing, Charlie’s is the home bar for the Windy City Empire, the Chicago chapter of the International Court System.

Then Kate asked me to be one of her duchesses. I thought to myself: What is this silliness? Why emperors and empresses, princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses? I’m an anarchist. I don’t get hierarchy. I can’t keep all these titles straight. What is this about? And what does a duchess do anyway? Like I don’t have enough on my plate already?

Then of course I noticed things on their Facebook page I wanted to fix. Even though I don’t want any responsibilities, I fall into them, mainly because I have opinions about how to fix Facebook pages.

So I became Empress Kate’s Duchess for Empire 15 of the Imperial City Court of the Prairie State Empire, or Windy City Empire for short.

I didn’t know about the International Court System before Kate got me involved, but I certainly feel like I should have known about it. It has a fascinating and important history. The revered Mama José Sarria, an advocate for civil rights, for all people but especially gay and trans people and drag performers, was the first Empress. The organization’s guiding ethos is to have fun while raising money for charities in their communities: “Raising Money One Dollar at a Time. From the Heart, Through the Court, For the Community.” Started in 1965, what came to be today’s International Court System is one of the largest and oldest LGBTQ+ organizations in the world, with over seventy chapters or “Empires” in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

There are many aspects that I feel I still don’t understand, such as the significance and responsibilities of the various roles and titles. In the beginning, there seemed to be an awful lot of rules, for example about something they call “Protocol,” which has to do with how people are introduced and described when doing their “walk” at Coronations, the yearly gala events each court holds to celebrate the end of one reign and usher in the new Emperor and Empress. But by this year’s Chicago Coronation in November, I came to realize a lot of it was just about being silly, in the spirit of camp.

Camp is the key to understanding what’s going on with all these titles, the formalwear, the very large costume jewelry, and the significance and subversiveness of the International Court System. Interestingly enough Susan Sontag’s iconic essay on camp was published in 1964, close to the founding date of the court system in 1965. Here’s an updated evaluation of camp by Bruce LaBruce, who happens to be the director of one of my favorite movies of all time, The Misandrists,

While writing this, I was motivated to watch Paris Burning on Netflix, which gave articulation to some things I had been thinking about, some insight into these glamorous, if tongue-in-cheek, performances of royalty, pomp and circumstance.

I very much enjoy performing in drag. I like practicing the numbers. I love music, but I can’t sing at all, so dancing around and lip-synching is a great outlet for me. I’ve never been much for costumes and makeup. At first I didn’t want to spend too much money on it until I decided I liked performing drag at their shows. But now that I’ve decided that I like it, I’m building up my collection: a couple of wigs; sports bras in lieu of binders; men’s clothing from eBay and thrift stores, etc. I have two drag characters: a male, Hipster Ken; and a female, Cougar Barbie.

Drag is a way for me to share my love of music, dance, performance, and gender-bending. I’ll get more involved with the costume and makeup aspect as I pursue it. It will be like I’m my own doll to dress up!

I like the people, especially some of the drag performers and kinky fetish people I’ve met. Some of the drag performers have helped me think about my drag characters and their help has been invaluable. Also, I just like being around other kinky people.

I also like raising money for good causes. I was especially proud that Kate chose Project Fierce Chicago, which helps homeless LGBTQ+ youth, as her cause. We will continue to raise money for Project Fierce as one of our causes in the upcoming year. Currently they’re focused on their Emergency Relief Fund for young people who need funds to keep housing or assistance with barriers that could lead to homelessness. Some folks who have received funds have been homeless and needed assistance with basic necessities. Additionally, the PFC Emergency Fund has been able to provide critical financial resources to LGBTQ+ young adults experiencing housing instability who needed support making rent payments, covering utilities like electricity and gas, accessing Ventra passes, and purchasing essential household goods.

I like putting little shows together like my singer-songwriter night . One of my Duchess duties was to organize an event. Putting together a show is a responsibility, but the payoff is that I get to realize my vision. I like coming up with an interesting bill of performers.

Yes, there’s the raising money for charity, but that’s not the whole point. If I wanted to give money to charity, I could just write a check or click on a Paypal link. These shows that we do are about visibility, awareness, community. I was able to sell people on the idea of the show partly because of the cause. I like creating these win-win-win situations where the venue and the performers and the cause all benefit from their shared association with the event.

Mainly the various courts put on drag shows. The tips the performers collect go to charity. About half of all court members are drag performers. Most of the rest are some variant of LGBTQ+, though all are welcome to be members. There is definitely a desire and a push to be diverse and inclusive.

The most striking event for me was the Out-of-Town Show I saw when I went to Buffalo, New York for their Coronation weekend. People of all different ages, sizes, shapes, races, genders gathered together, many in full drag or campy formalwear, performed on a stage in a packed bar. In all the performances, I saw people sharing themselves and their love of music.

In talking with the various people I met that weekend, and also with my fellow Chicago court members, I’ve come to understand that, for a lot of them, the court is a way of developing their own leadership and organization skills through the responsibilities that their royal titles bestow upon them. It is also a form of activism, a way for them to take action on issues that are important to them. Throughout the history of the organization, a lot of the causes supported have been AIDS-related, both research on the disease itself and support for the people suffering from it. I know many members care deeply about the upcoming LGBTQ+ generations. Hearts go out to those in small towns, some in the Bible Belt, who suffer because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, some dealing with bullying and rejection from church and family members, some depressed and alone, some even suicidal or homeless.

When I first got involved with the court, members kept telling me it was like a family, which was not a selling point for me. Family has associations of obligations and conflict for me, though I guess, for some people, it has associations of acceptance and security.

I became more aware of drag families. It was very sweet to watch drag mothers with their drag daughters, bringing them gifts and taking pride in their accomplishments.

I’m looking forward to performing at future Windy City Empire events. Being a member of the court is a responsibility, but it’s a lot of fun too.

Feature photo: Duchess Elizabeth in tux next to Empress Kate in her ball gown. Photo credit to Joseph Stevens.

[gta-5-cheats]

Students confront the unethical side of tech in ‘Designing for Evil’ course

New Post has been published on http://secondcovers.com/students-confront-the-unethical-side-of-tech-in-designing-for-evil-course/

Students confront the unethical side of tech in ‘Designing for Evil’ course

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Whether it’s surveilling or deceiving users, mishandling or selling their data, or engendering unhealthy habits or thoughts, tech these days is not short on unethical behavior. But it isn’t enough to just say “that’s creepy.” Fortunately, a course at the University of Washington is equipping its students with the philosophical insights to better identify — and fix — tech’s pernicious lack of ethics.

“Designing for Evil” just concluded its first quarter at UW’s Information School, where prospective creators of apps and services like those we all rely on daily learn the tools of the trade. But thanks to Alexis Hiniker, who teaches the class, they are also learning the critical skill of inquiring into the moral and ethical implications of those apps and services.

What, for example, is a good way of going about making a dating app that is inclusive and promotes healthy relationships? How can an AI imitating a human avoid unnecessary deception? How can something as invasive as China’s proposed citizen scoring system be made as user-friendly as it is possible to be?

I talked to all the student teams at a poster session held on UW’s campus, and also chatted with Hiniker, who designed the course and seemed pleased at how it turned out.

The premise is that the students are given a crash course in ethical philosophy that acquaints them with influential ideas, such as utilitarianism and deontology.

“It’s designed to be as accessible to lay people as possible,” Hiniker told me. “These aren’t philosophy students — this is a design class. But I wanted to see what I could get away with.”

The primary text is Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel’s popular book Justice, which Hiniker felt combined the various philosophies into a readable, integrated format. After ingesting this, the students grouped up and picked an app or technology that they would evaluate using the principles described, and then prescribe ethical remedies.

As it turned out, finding ethical problems in tech was the easy part — and fixes for them ranged from the trivial to the impossible. Their insights were interesting, but I got the feeling from many of them that there was a sort of disappointment at the fact that so much of what tech offers, or how it offers it, is inescapably and fundamentally unethical.

I found the students fell into one of three categories.

Not fundamentally unethical (but could use an ethical tune-up)

WebMD is of course a very useful site, but it was plain to the students that it lacked inclusivity: its symptom checker is stacked against non-English-speakers and those who might not know the names of symptoms. The team suggested a more visual symptom reporter, with a basic body map and non-written symptom and pain indicators.

Hello Barbie, the doll that chats back to kids, is certainly a minefield of potential legal and ethical violations, but there’s no reason it can’t be done right. With parental consent and careful engineering it will be in line with privacy laws, but the team said that it still failed some tests of keeping the dialogue with kids healthy and parents informed. The scripts for interaction, they said, should be public — which is obvious in retrospect — and audio should be analyzed on device rather than in the cloud. Lastly, a set of warning words or phrases indicating unhealthy behaviors could warn parents of things like self-harm while keeping the rest of the conversation secret.

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WeChat Discover allows users to find others around them and see recent photos they’ve taken — it’s opt-in, which is good, but it can be filtered by gender, promoting a hookup culture that the team said is frowned on in China. It also obscures many user controls behind multiple layers of menus, which may cause people to share location when they don’t intend to. Some basic UI fixes were proposed by the students, and a few ideas on how to combat the possibility of unwanted advances from strangers.

Netflix isn’t evil, but its tendency to promote binge-watching has robbed its users of many an hour. This team felt that some basic user-set limits like two episodes per day, or delaying the next episode by a certain amount of time, could interrupt the habit and encourage people to take back control of their time.

Fundamentally unethical (fixes are still worth making)

FakeApp is a way to face-swap in video, producing convincing fakes in which a politician or friend appears to be saying something they didn’t. It’s fundamentally deceptive, of course, in a broad sense, but really only if the clips are passed on as genuine. Watermarks visible and invisible, as well as controlled cropping of source videos, were this team’s suggestion, though ultimately the technology won’t yield to these voluntary mitigations. So really, an informed populace is the only answer. Good luck with that!

China’s “social credit” system is not actually, the students argued, absolutely unethical — that judgment involves a certain amount of cultural bias. But I’m comfortable putting it here because of the massive ethical questions it has sidestepped and dismissed on the road to deployment. Their highly practical suggestions, however, were focused on making the system more accountable and transparent. Contest reports of behavior, see what types of things have contributed to your own score, see how it has changed over time, and so on.

Tinder’s unethical nature, according to the team, was based on the fact that it was ostensibly about forming human connections but is very plainly designed to be a meat market. Forcing people to think of themselves as physical objects first and foremost in pursuit of romance is not healthy, they argued, and causes people to devalue themselves. As a countermeasure, they suggested having responses to questions or prompts be the first thing you see about a person. You’d have to swipe based on that before seeing any pictures. I suggested having some deal-breaker questions you’d have to agree on, as well. It’s not a bad idea, though open to gaming (like the rest of online dating).

Fundamentally unethical (fixes are essentially impossible)

The League, on the other hand, was a dating app that proved intractable to ethical guidelines. Not only was it a meat market, but it was a meat market where people paid to be among the self-selected “elite” and could filter by ethnicity and other troubling categories. Their suggestions of removing the fee and these filters, among other things, essentially destroyed the product. Unfortunately, The League is an unethical product for unethical people. No amount of tweaking will change that.

Duplex was taken on by a smart team that nevertheless clearly only started their project after Google I/O. Unfortunately, they found that the fundamental deception intrinsic in an AI posing as a human is ethically impermissible. It could, of course, identify itself — but that would spoil the entire value proposition. But they also asked a question I didn’t think to ask myself in my own coverage: why isn’t this AI exhausting all other options before calling a human? It could visit the site, send a text, use other apps and so on. AIs in general should default to interacting with websites and apps first, then to other AIs, then and only then to people — at which time it should say it’s an AI.

To me the most valuable part of all these inquiries was learning what hopefully becomes a habit: to look at the fundamental ethical soundness of a business or technology and be able to articulate it.

That may be the difference in a meeting between being able to say something vague and easily blown off, like “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” and describing a specific harm and reason why that harm is important — and perhaps how it can be avoided.

As for Hiniker, she has some ideas for improving the course should it be approved for a repeat next year. A broader set of texts, for one: “More diverse writers, more diverse voices,” she said. And ideally it could even be expanded to a multi-quarter course so that the students get more than a light dusting of ethics.

With any luck the kids in this course (and any in the future) will be able to help make those choices, leading to fewer Leagues and Duplexes and more COPPA-compliant smart toys and dating apps that don’t sabotage self-esteem.

[theinvinciblenoob]

Whether it’s surveilling or deceiving users, mishandling or selling their data, or engendering unhealthy habits or thoughts, tech these days is not short on unethical behavior. But it isn’t enough to just say “that’s creepy.” Fortunately, a course at the University of Washington is equipping its students with the philosophical insights to better identify — and fix — tech’s pernicious lack of ethics.

“Designing for Evil” just concluded its first quarter at UW’s Information School, where prospective creators of apps and services like those we all rely on daily learn the tools of the trade. But thanks to Alexis Hiniker, who teaches the class, they are also learning the critical skill of inquiring into the moral and ethical implications of those apps and services.

What, for example, is a good way of going about making a dating app that is inclusive and promotes healthy relationships? How can an AI imitating a human avoid unnecessary deception? How can something as invasive as China’s proposed citizen scoring system be made as user-friendly as it is possible to be?

I talked to all the student teams at a poster session held on UW’s campus, and also chatted with Hiniker, who designed the course and seemed pleased at how it turned out.

The premise is that the students are given a crash course in ethical philosophy that acquaints them with influential ideas, such as utilitarianism and deontology.

“It’s designed to be as accessible to lay people as possible,” Hiniker told me. “These aren’t philosophy students — this is a design class. But I wanted to see what I could get away with.”

The primary text is Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel’s popular book Justice, which Hiniker felt combined the various philosophies into a readable, integrated format. After ingesting this, the students grouped up and picked an app or technology that they would evaluate using the principles described, and then prescribe ethical remedies.

As it turned out, finding ethical problems in tech was the easy part — and fixes for them ranged from the trivial to the impossible. Their insights were interesting, but I got the feeling from many of them that there was a sort of disappointment at the fact that so much of what tech offers, or how it offers it, is inescapably and fundamentally unethical.

I found the students fell into one of three categories.

Not fundamentally unethical (but could use an ethical tune-up)

WebMD is of course a very useful site, but it was plain to the students that it lacked inclusivity: its symptom checker is stacked against non-English-speakers and those who might not know the names of symptoms. The team suggested a more visual symptom reporter, with a basic body map and non-written symptom and pain indicators.

Hello Barbie, the doll that chats back to kids, is certainly a minefield of potential legal and ethical violations, but there’s no reason it can’t be done right. With parental consent and careful engineering it will be in line with privacy laws, but the team said that it still failed some tests of keeping the dialogue with kids healthy and parents informed. The scripts for interaction, they said, should be public — which is obvious in retrospect — and audio should be analyzed on device rather than in the cloud. Lastly, a set of warning words or phrases indicating unhealthy behaviors could warn parents of things like self-harm while keeping the rest of the conversation secret.

WeChat Discover allows users to find others around them and see recent photos they’ve taken — it’s opt-in, which is good, but it can be filtered by gender, promoting a hookup culture that the team said is frowned on in China. It also obscures many user controls behind multiple layers of menus, which may cause people to share location when they don’t intend to. Some basic UI fixes were proposed by the students, and a few ideas on how to combat the possibility of unwanted advances from strangers.

Netflix isn’t evil, but its tendency to promote binge-watching has robbed its users of many an hour. This team felt that some basic user-set limits like two episodes per day, or delaying the next episode by a certain amount of time, could interrupt the habit and encourage people to take back control of their time.

Fundamentally unethical (fixes are still worth making)

FakeApp is a way to face-swap in video, producing convincing fakes in which a politician or friend appears to be saying something they didn’t. It’s fundamentally deceptive, of course, in a broad sense, but really only if the clips are passed on as genuine. Watermarks visible and invisible, as well as controlled cropping of source videos, were this team’s suggestion, though ultimately the technology won’t yield to these voluntary mitigations. So really, an informed populace is the only answer. Good luck with that!

China’s “social credit” system is not actually, the students argued, absolutely unethical — that judgment involves a certain amount of cultural bias. But I’m comfortable putting it here because of the massive ethical questions it has sidestepped and dismissed on the road to deployment. Their highly practical suggestions, however, were focused on making the system more accountable and transparent. Contest reports of behavior, see what types of things have contributed to your own score, see how it has changed over time, and so on.

Tinder’s unethical nature, according to the team, was based on the fact that it was ostensibly about forming human connections but is very plainly designed to be a meat market. Forcing people to think of themselves as physical objects first and foremost in pursuit of romance is not healthy, they argued, and causes people to devalue themselves. As a countermeasure, they suggested having responses to questions or prompts be the first thing you see about a person. You’d have to swipe based on that before seeing any pictures. I suggested having some deal-breaker questions you’d have to agree on, as well. It’s not a bad idea, though open to gaming (like the rest of online dating).

Fundamentally unethical (fixes are essentially impossible)

The League, on the other hand, was a dating app that proved intractable to ethical guidelines. Not only was it a meat market, but it was a meat market where people paid to be among the self-selected “elite” and could filter by ethnicity and other troubling categories. Their suggestions of removing the fee and these filters, among other things, essentially destroyed the product. Unfortunately, The League is an unethical product for unethical people. No amount of tweaking will change that.

Duplex was taken on by a smart team that nevertheless clearly only started their project after Google I/O. Unfortunately, they found that the fundamental deception intrinsic in an AI posing as a human is ethically impermissible. It could, of course, identify itself — but that would spoil the entire value proposition. But they also asked a question I didn’t think to ask myself in my own coverage: why isn’t this AI exhausting all other options before calling a human? It could visit the site, send a text, use other apps and so on. AIs in general should default to interacting with websites and apps first, then to other AIs, then and only then to people — at which time it should say it’s an AI.

To me the most valuable part of all these inquiries was learning what hopefully becomes a habit: to look at the fundamental ethical soundness of a business or technology and be able to articulate it.

That may be the difference in a meeting between being able to say something vague and easily blown off, like “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” and describing a specific harm and reason why that harm is important — and perhaps how it can be avoided.

As for Hiniker, she has some ideas for improving the course should it be approved for a repeat next year. A broader set of texts, for one: “More diverse writers, more diverse voices,” she said. And ideally it could even be expanded to a multi-quarter course so that the students get more than a light dusting of ethics.

With any luck the kids in this course (and any in the future) will be able to help make those choices, leading to fewer Leagues and Duplexes and more COPPA-compliant smart toys and dating apps that don’t sabotage self-esteem.

via TechCrunch